With their excellent and readable translation of Grains of Gold by Gendun Chopel (1903–51), Jinpa and Lopez make a substantial contribution to the growing understanding of this intriguing figure. In two companion volumes in the University of Chicago's Buddhism and Modernity series, Lopez examines Gendun Chopel's distinctive interpretation of the Middle Way School of Buddhism and his atypical conceptions of science.Footnote 11
The present text, deftly and fluidly translated and annotated by two of the best scholars in the field, was arguably Chopel's greatest work, as it probes most thoroughly the unique insights only he could offer: his accounts of other religions and cultures he encountered in his travels, his assessment of colonialism and slavery, and his engagement with modernity. More than a century after his birth, Tibetans living in exile continue to struggle with many of these themes. At the same time, scholars will gain a deeper understanding of the man Lopez has called the first modern Tibetan and who may still be among the most modern.
Writing explicitly for a Tibetan audience, Gendun Chopel endeavors to address gaps in the national awareness about a broad range of issues. Paying special attention to eras during which Tibetans were disengaged from India, he provides his own reading of the great Buddhist kingdoms of the past, including the Mauryan, Gupta, and Pāla dynasties; the great cosmological, legendary, and historical sweep of Hindu India; the periods of Muslim rule; and the historical forces shaped by the presence of colonial powers in India and beyond. In addition, there are fascinating smaller discursions into diverse areas of academic inquiry, including linguistic taxonomy, comparative grammar, orthography, race theory, the caste system, slavery, and colonialism. The detailed endnotes track all of Chopel's sources and references, and the introduction effectively situates the work in Chopel's life.
Gendun Chopel lived his life on the margins and as an outsider. Whether living at the interstices of Tibetan, Chinese, and Mongolian cultures in his childhood; studying as an outsider in Central Tibet; or wandering through India and Sri Lanka for a dozen years in his later thirties and early forties—the period of time during which the present text was written—he became habituated to seeing the world from his own distinct perspective. As a result, his agile mind was ever ready to question old assumptions and stand apart from standard orthodoxies.
He portrays the Sikh religion in a thoroughly positive light, remarking that “[a]nyone who sees this amazing community experiences a sense of joy and admiration” (p. 301), and he idealizes Buddhism as being spread “by monks, who would not even hurt an insect” (p. 277). In contrast, he offers a sharp assessment of other religions. In the first sustained Tibetan-language discussion of Islam, he highlights the capricious cruelties of Mughal kings and blames Muslims for destroying Buddhism in India. He criticizes Islam, along with Christianity, for suggesting there could be a war that is just and for promoting compassion only towards their co-religionists. Chopel derides Europeans as lustful, greedy, hypocritical, and pathetic, and he is sharply critical of the injustices of the caste system, which he depicts as “meaningless” (p. 141) and a feature of “the so-called religion of the heartless Hindu brahmins” (p. 104).
Jinpa and Lopez are well-suited to the task of presenting this distinctive work, as both are intrigued by—and have long been engaged in critically evaluating—the types of cross-cultural understanding that interests Chopel. Aside from his studies of Buddhist thought and practice, much of Lopez's own scholarship has concerned ways in which Buddhists have been depicted in the West and how Buddhists have engaged with the West. Thupten Jinpa studied both Western philosophy and science at Cambridge University after reaching the pinnacle of traditional Tibetan monastic education, and as the primary translator of the Dalai Lama, his profession is quite literally to mediate intercultural communication. It is no wonder they find Chopel to be worthy of study.
Chopel struggles with traditionalism and objectivity as he contends with the challenges of understanding across cultural lines. The overarching advice he offers is that Tibetans should not rely so heavily on the authorities of the past, and they should cultivate a critical disposition toward unsubstantiated historical, geographical, and religious assumptions. In a volume seasoned with witty remarks and amusing turns of phrase, rendered fluently and naturally here, Chopel is at his most acerbic when he criticizes his fellow Tibetans for jumping to conclusions and believing in fantastic things. For example, he scoffs at a misidentification of a Buddhist holy place by attributing the error to “those who have never taken a single step in the direction of India, who take the words of one or two people who happen to wander in from that direction and mix it with dreams they had in their own bed” (p. 97). Yet he is apprehensive that his approach will not be well received, commenting, “Please do not harass me” (p. 112).
It is ironic that when speaking of the still unfolding independence movement in India, Chopel remarks that the legal norms in foreign lands permit the “freedom to speak out” and “no one fears being persecuted and executed merely for saying that the government's actions are wrong” (p. 408). By the time Chopel returned to Tibet in 1945, it was a tense place already fearful of the Chinese attacks that would soon ensue, and the authorities were suspicious of forces from beyond Tibet's borders. The following year, Chopel was arrested out of fear that he had brought dangerous ideas from abroad, and his life's scholarly work was seized; when he left prison three years later, he was crushed, and his rapid descent into alcoholism commenced, culminating in his 1951 death only weeks after the Chinese had invaded.
